ABSTRACT
Badakhshan, the north-east province of Afghanistan, is the mountainous land (covering an area of 10,886 square kilometres) drained by the Kokcha River and its tributaries. In the year 1975 some 300,000 people lived there; today it would be difficult to estimate the number since many were forced to flee or were killed in the war. Confined among the high mountains of the Hindukush to the south, the Pamirs in the east, and the mountains of Darwaz and Shoghnan in the north, this province lay for a long time isolated and cut off from the centres of East and West Turkestan with which a lively trade and exchange of culture was once carried on. The position of this area is best designated by the term ‘remote‘.
